As an individual ages, the eye is less able to accommodate, or bend the natural lens, to focus on objects that are relatively near to the observer. This condition is known as presbyopia. Similarly, for persons who have had their natural lens removed and an intraocular lens inserted as a replacement, the ability to accommodate is absent.
Among the methods used to correct for the eye's failure to accommodate are lenses that have more than one optical power. In particular, multifocal contact and intraocular lenses have been developed in which zones of distance and near, and in some cases intermediate, power are provided.
It is known that an individual's pupil size varies with age, luminance and distance from the eye to the object being viewed. For example, as luminance increases, pupil size decreases while, as a person ages, the pupil's response to changes in illumination diminishes. However, some conventional multifocal contact lenses typically do not account for pupil size and, thus, are less efficient in distributing light to the lens wearer in all viewing conditions. Even in those lenses that account for pupil size, the lenses do not account for the fact that the cones of the eye are more sensitive to light rays that strike perpendicular to the cones' surface than other rays. Thus, the intensity of the response to light peaks at or near the center of the pupillary aperture and decreases towards the edges, a phenomenon known as the Stiles-Crawford effect of the first kind (“Stiles Crawford Effect” or “SCE”). Therefore, the best visual result for a lens cannot be obtained by merely matching the size of the optical zones of a multifocal lens by taking into account only pupil size. Rather, the design must take into account both the pupil size and the Stiles-Crawford Effect.